Dear reader, I invite you to join the Egyptian Campaign against Succession if you oppose injustice and despotism and look forward to the dignified life you and your children deserve. Come and join us. God willing, we will shape Egypt’s future without waiting for them to shape it their way to serve their own interests. The time has come for us to leave our seats in the auditorium and create the next scene ourselves.
Democracy is the solution.
November 1, 2009
Three Fallacious Arguments
for Supporting Gamal Mubarak
Last week I wrote about the creation of the Egyptian Campaign against Succession, which aims to prevent President Mubarak from passing our country on to his son, Gamal, because Egypt is not a private estate or a poultry farm owned by someone, whatever his rank or position. Patriotic intellectuals, political parties, and organizations of various political and intellectual tendencies took part in setting up the campaign and all of them decided to do their best to ensure Egyptians regain their natural right to elect the next president of the republic through respectable elections.
As soon as the article appeared, dozens of messages flooded in to me from readers inside Egypt and abroad, all of them declaring their support for the campaign and asking how they can join it. I thank the readers, I appreciate their magnanimous enthusiasm, and I assure them that within a few days the campaign’s founding statement will come out and the procedures for joining will be announced. We expect this campaign to enjoy complete success, God willing, but we also understand that the path will not be easy, because the Egyptian regime has formed its own special organization to promote the succession, with journalists, politicians, media people, and law professors whose sole task is to prepare the Egyptian people to accept the idea of succession. No one respects these advocates of succession because they are hypocrites who have betrayed their professional and patriotic duties, preferring to serve their personal interests over the interests of the nation. Gamal Mubarak’s propagandists have only three fallacious arguments they repeat again and again. In brief, they run like this:
First, they say Mr. Gamal Mubarak is an urbane, well-educated young man and irreplaceable as the presidential candidate at this time. They also say that he will be the first civilian president of Egypt since the revolution of 1952, and that this is a step toward democracy. So why don’t we all agree on him, with the provision that he promises to serve only two presidential terms? We agree with them that Gamal Mubarak is indeed urbane, has had a fair amount of education, and speaks English fluently, but we don’t understand what all that has to do with the presidency. In Egypt there are hundreds of thousands of urbane people with advanced academic degrees who have good English and French. Are they all fit to be president? As for the idea that Gamal Mubarak is the only option, this is not true. Egypt has enough talent and intellectual power to serve ten countries together. As the pace of the succession process speeds up, Egyptians have started to think of major figures who would be suitable as president: Ahmed Zewail, Mohamed ElBaradei, Amr Moussa, Hesham al-Bastawisi, Zakaria Abdel Aziz, and many others. All of these are far preferable to Gamal Mubarak as president.
The argument that Gamal Mubarak will be a civilian president for Egypt is also based on a fallacy, because what defines the nature of a regime is not the profession of the president but the way in which he assumes power. There are autocratic military regimes that have put a civilian into the presidency, as happened in Syria with Bashar al-Asad, and alternatively there are democratic systems in which military men have left military service and stood for election and won, or have taken on ministerial or presidential jobs, like Colin Powell in the United States and Charles de Gaulle in France. If Gamal Mubarak gains the presidency of Egypt, this will not put an end to military rule but merely add to it another disaster. Autocracy will be combined with a hereditary system, and after that what will there be to stop Gamal Mubarak from granting the presidency to his son or nephew? Those who say that Gamal Mubarak will restrict himself to two presidential terms are trying to deceive the public and do not respect people’s intelligence. What will oblige Gamal Mubarak to give up power voluntarily? At the beginning of his time in office President Hosni Mubarak also promised to restrict himself to two terms but then he went back on his promise and has stayed in power for thirty straight years.
Second, Gamal Mubarak’s propagandists say that Egyptians are not interested in democracy and are not qualified to practice it because of illiteracy. They also claim that if there were free elections, the Muslim Three Fallacious Arguments for Supporting Gamal Mubarak 9 Brotherhood would win a majority and take power. In fact Egypt is now witnessing a wave of strikes and protests on a scale unknown since the 1952 revolution. This widespread social unrest heralds change that is inevitable and not at all remote from democracy. The constant protest movements express Egyptians’ demand for justice, which can come about only through democratic reform. The argument that Egyptians are not qualified for democracy, besides being insulting, reveals a shameful ignorance of Egyptian history. Democratic experiments began in Egypt earlier than in many European countries, when in 1866 Khedive Ismail set up the first advisory council of representatives. At first the council was advisory, but the members fought for and obtained real authority. From 1882 until 1952 Egyptians struggled and thousands gave their lives for two objectives: independence and the constitution. In other words freeing Egypt from British occupation was always connected in the consciousness of Egyptians with establishing democracy. Democracy means equality, justice, and freedom, and all of these are basic human rights that no one people deserves more than any other. The argument that illiteracy prevents democracy is countered by the fact that the level of illiteracy in India has not stopped a great democracy from creating a great state there in just a few years, and by the fact that the level of illiteracy before the revolution did not prevent the Wafd Party from scoring landslide victories in any free elections. The illiterate Egyptian peasants would always vote for the Wafd against the landowners, who were members of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party. No one needs a doctorate in law to know that the government of his country is oppressive and corrupt; in fact, the feelings of simple people are often closer to the truth than the views and lengthy debates of cultured people. In any case Egypt has more than forty million educated people, quite enough for a democratic experiment to succeed.
As for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian regime has exaggerated its role and influence, using it as a bogeyman to frighten western countries into agreeing to despotism and succession. The Muslim Brotherhood, in terms of numbers and influence, could not win a majority in any free elections where people turn out to vote. Even if we supposed they did win, wouldn’t that be the free choice of Egyptians, which we should respect if we are true democrats? However much we may disagree with the Muslim Brotherhood, are they not in the end Egyptian citizens who have the right to win elections and take part in government as long as they respect the rules of democracy? Democratic reform alone is sure to eliminate religious extremism, whereas in autocratic countries, even if extremist movements are repressed and crushed, the causes of extremism will remain latent below the surface, awaiting the first opportunity to revive.
Last, the propagandists wonder why all these attacks are being made on Gamal Mubarak. Is he not an Egyptian citizen who has a right to stand for election to the presidency? The answer is that Gamal Mubarak will have the right to stand for the presidency only when there is a democratic system that gives all candidates equal opportunities, when the emergency law is repealed, public freedoms are granted, and the constitution is amended to allow for honest competition for the presidency, and when clean elections take place under full and independent judicial supervision, with impartial international monitoring, without intervention by the police or thugs, and without fraud. Only then will it be Gamal Mubarak’s right to stand for the presidency. But for him to stand under the shadow of the current apparatus of repression and fraud would be to repeat the same wretched and ridiculous charade. He would be the nominee of the ruling National Democratic Party, the authorities